advantage and honour; he has
leisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built on
a solid base, grows in men's mouths. He attaches himself to a party; he
enters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects.
At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
Glyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to
England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out
on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one
hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself
up to grind colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school,
which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having
studied in the Academy,--as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence
Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits
those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but
Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence
Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his
fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian
than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he
grows slovenly and discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,'
he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five
what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question
also!"

"If all men were as worldly as you," said Glyndon, rising, "there would
never have been an artist or a poet!"

"Perhaps we should do just as well without them," answered Mervale. "Is
it not time to think of dinner? The mullets here are remarkably fine!"

CHAPTER 2.IX.

Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
In des Ideales Reich!
"Das Ideal und das Leben."

Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
Into the realm of the Ideal.

As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student
by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which,
in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in
art is created by what Raphael so well describes,--namely, THE IDEA